Professor David Musyimi Ndetei is a highly distinguished Kenyan medical pioneer, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Nairobi, and the Founding Director of the Africa Institute of Mental and Brain Health. Renowned as one of Africa’s leading authorities on mental health, he has dedicated his career to expanding affordable psychiatric care and spearheading psychiatric research across the continent.
He earned his MBChB from the University of Nairobi (1975), followed by specialized psychiatric credentials in London, a PhD, and a prestigious Doctor of Science (DSc) degree.
Rose Mbithe Mulwa (formerly Rose Mbithe Ndetei) is a Kenyan businesswoman, politician, and the ex-wife of David Ndetei. Born and raised in iveti, Machakos County, she has maintained a public profile spanning across business, philanthropy, and ran for the Governor of Machakos County in the 2022 general elections, losing the seat to Wavinya Ndeti.
Rose Mbithe Mulwa and Professor David Musyimi Ndetei were officially divorced in 2001, bringing an end to their 31-year marriage. Prof. David Ndetei’s 31-year marriage to his first wife, Rose Mbithe Mulwa, officially ended in a bitter divorce. A subsequent official gazette notice confirming her name change was published in May 2003.
Following the dissolution of that first marriage, Prof. Ndetei subsequently married Dr. Victoria Mutiso following the finalization of the divorce. Court submissions from recent legal proceedings confirm the union occurred more than two decades ago. They shared two children together. Dr. Mutiso, a prominent clinical psychologist and mental health researcher, was fatally shot on July 29, 2026, in Upper Hill, Nairobi.
Following the 2001 divorce, in 2002, Rose Mulwa filed a landmark case under the Married Women’s Property Act of 1882 to claim a share of Prof. Ndetei’s multi-million shilling estate under High Court Civil Case (HCCC) No. 6A of 2002. She ultimately lost the main matrimonial distribution suit, with courts ruling against her claims for a direct split of the properties. While she lost the main suit, the loss triggered a 24-year cycle of bitter civil side-battles, appeals, and property disputes.
The cornerstone of this decades-long conflict is a prime, highly valuable parcel of land legally registered as L.R. No. 1504/13. The property is a prime tract measuring over 20 acres (often referenced as 25 acres in various legal filings) situated in the North West of the Athi River Township / Mlolongo zone within Machakos District. Because of its proximity to the Mombasa Highway and Nairobi, its commercial value skyrocketed into billions of shillings over the last two decades.
During their marriage, the land was a core family asset. Following the split, Prof. Ndetei retained the title and launched agricultural and residential projects on the property. The land also became the subject of separate, highly publicized multi-million shilling litigations:
In the early 2000s, Prof. Ndetei successfully sued a neighboring factory, Orbit Chemical Industries, claiming their factory’s storm water and chemical discharge ruined the agricultural usability of this specific Athi River parcel. He was eventually awarded over Ksh 269 million in damages.
The land was also entangled in commercial financing legal disputes with institutions like Daima Bank and Housing Finance Company of Kenya regarding charges registered against the title deed.
During the highly contentious 2001 divorce and the subsequent 2002 matrimonial property division lawsuit, the late lawyer, Mathew Kyalo Mbobu served as the primary legal counsel representing Professor David Ndetei.
As the legal battles dragged on and legal fees escalated, a portion of the disputed 25-acre Athi River property was temporarily transferred and registered into Kyalo Mbobu’s name. This transfer was heavily contested by Rose Mbithe Mulwa, who claimed it was a fraudulent maneuver to strip her of her matrimonial share and shield the asset from the ongoing division-of-property suit.
Outraged by the land transfer, Rose Mulwa publicly accused lawyer Kyalo Mbobu of unprofessional conduct and collusion. In response, Mbobu filed a massive defamation lawsuit against Rose Mulwa in 2004, claiming she had severely damaged his professional reputation as a senior advocate.
Following years of legal back-and-forth and eventual court rulings that favored Prof. Ndetei in the main matrimonial property suit, the land title was eventually cleared of its encumbrances and transferred back to Prof. Ndetei and his second wife, Dr. Victoria Mutiso.
On the evening of Tuesday, September 9, 2025, Mathew Kyalo Mbobu was brutally assassinated in a targeted execution. Up until the night he was shot dead along Magadi Road, Mbobu remained the central figure blocking Rose Mulwa’s legal attempts to seize or auction the disputed 25 acres land in Mlolongo.
The assassination of prominent Nairobi attorney Mathew Kyalo Mbobu occurred on the evening of Tuesday, September 9, 2025, along Magadi Road in Karen, Nairobi. The attack sent shockwaves through the country due to its execution-style, predetermined nature.
At around 5:09 PM, Mbobu left his Nairobi office and began driving home toward his Bogani residence in Karen. He was actively trailed by hitmen riding a motorcycle.
As his vehicle slowed down due to evening traffic along Magadi Road, the motorcycle pulled up right beside his car door. An assailant dismounted, pulled out a firearm, and opened fire into the vehicle at point-blank range. The gunmen immediately sped off into the traffic on their motorbike, leaving the vehicle at the scene. No valuables or money were stolen from his car, suggesting it was a targeted hit.
An official postmortem examination conducted by government pathologists revealed that Mbobu was shot 8 times. The vast majority of the bullets penetrated from his right side, indicating the killer fired straight through the driver’s side window. The cause of death was certified as massive internal bleeding resulting from severe trauma to the neck and spinal column.
Immediately following the killing, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) Homicide Unit took over the case and pursued multiple financial and land-related motives, but all the trails grew cold.
Seeking to reclaim a stake in the asset, Rose Mulwa filed a fresh civil suit at the Machakos Law Courts naming Dr. Mutiso as a primary defendant. Shortly after the Machakos lawsuit intensified, the legal gridlock culminated in a highly aggressive enforcement that resulted in the physical eviction and demolition of residential properties belonging to Dr. Mutiso’s family on the Athi River land.
On February 12, 2026, a highly chaotic and aggressive raid took place at the Mlolongo residential home of the late Dr. Victoria Mutiso and her husband, Professor David Ndetei. The events of that day completely shifted the nature of the 25-year matrimonial property dispute from a civil courtroom battle into a violent criminal investigation.
According to police and court records, a large group of hired individuals—accompanied by police officers allegedly led by a senior officer from the Mlolongo Police Station—invaded the approximately 20-acre property. Under the guise of enforcing a Machakos court-issued eviction notice, they used heavy machinery to completely flatten and demolish the residential properties belonging to Dr. Mutiso’s family, causing millions of shillings in property damage.
The execution of the eviction went far beyond a standard property demolition. In her subsequent complaints to the police, Dr. Mutiso alleged that the raiding party assailed the home and destroyed their personal belongings, attempted to forcefully abduct her and her husband, and stole several personal vehicles that were parked securely within the family compound.
Dr. Mutiso went to the Mlolongo Police Station immediately on February 12 to report the break-in, property destruction, and attempted abduction. However, she later stated that a senior local police commander actively interfered with the process. Because of this internal interference, the station refused to log the incident on the day it occurred, and Dr. Mutiso was only able to secure an official police entry months later, in May 2026, under OB Number 42/04/05/2026.
On the morning of Wednesday, July 29, 2026, in the Upper Hill area of Nairobi, as Dr. Mutiso’s taxi was navigating traffic, a Toyota Prado intentionally drove in front of the uber car, forcing the taxi driver to slow down and come to a halt. Immediately after the vehicle was blocked, hitmen riding on a motorcycle pulled up alongside the rear passenger window. The pillion passenger pulled out a firearm and shot Dr. Mutiso at close range before speeding off. The attackers did not steal any money, electronics, or personal belongings from the vehicle, signaling a clear premeditated contract killing.
The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) Homicide Unit has officially linked the September 9, 2025, assassination of lawyer Mathew Kyalo Mbobu and the July 29, 2026, assassination of Dr. Victoria Mutiso under a single investigation baseline.
In both assassinations, the two victims were primary targets of hostility stemming from the same 25-year matrimonial property dispute following the 2001 divorce of Rose Mbithe Mulwa and Prof. David Ndetei. Lawyer Kyalo Mbobu was the long-term legal counsel who represented Prof. Ndetei in court, successfully shielding and preserving the title of the multi-million shilling 20-acre Athi River land (L.R. No. 1504/13) against Rose Mulwa’s claims while Dr. Victoria Mutiso was Prof. Ndetei’s second wife and was explicitly named as the third defendant in Rose Mulwa’s fresh civil lawsuit seeking to reclaim a stake in that exact asset.
Both hits were carefully timed to exploit Nairobi’s traffic jams. Mbobu was struck while stuck in an evening traffic snarl-up along Magadi Road in Karen while Dr. Mutiso was ambushed while commuting in a taxi during morning traffic in Upper Hill.
In both executions, hitmen were riding on motorcycles, and in both cases, the pillion passengers pulled alongside the victims’ vehicles, opened fire at close range, and immediately melted back into the city traffic. Neither attack involved any element of theft. The attackers left cash, electronic devices, and personal belongings inside the vehicles completely untouched, verifying that both incidents were pre-planned contract killings.
Both victims were subjected to professional, point-blank fire directed primarily at their upper bodies to guarantee a fatal outcome. Mbobu succumbed to 8 gunshot wounds targeting his neck and upper body; Dr. Mutiso succumbed to 3 gunshot wounds, two to her head and one to her upper back. Both victims were killed while actively entangled in escalating friction over the land title. Dr. Mutiso was killed exactly 24 days after reporting to the Kilimani Police Station that a motorcycle gunman had tracked and pulled a pistol on her.
Immediately after the July 29 assassination along Ralph Bunche Road, DCI forensic teams swept the Upper Hill crime scene. They successfully extracted two spent cartridges and one bullet head, forwarding them to the National Forensic Laboratory for instant ballistic profiling. Detectives also seized and locked down the taxi involved for deep forensic examination while pulling CCTV footage from all surrounding office buildings to map the getaways.
The primary breakthrough occurred when surveillance teams tracked the registration and chassis details of the Toyota Prado used by the spotters to block Dr. Mutiso’s taxi. DCI data banks revealed that the SUV was not a randomly bought vehicle; it was explicitly identified as one of the vehicles reported missing or stolen during the disputed, hostile February 12 demolition of Dr. Mutiso’s family compound in Mlolongo. This provided immediate, actionable proof connecting the homicide back to the land battle.
Homicide detectives audited records at local police stations and pulled a critical report from the Kilimani Police Station. They confirmed that exactly 24 days prior to her murder, Dr. Mutiso reported surviving a July 7 ambush near Junction Mall, where motorcycle-riding men pointed a gun at her. In that active file, her husband, Prof. David Ndetei, had recorded a formal statement explicitly naming his son, Chris Mulwa, as the armed pillion passenger riding that motorcycle.
Armed with the vehicle nexus and the prior identification, an elite DCI operational team staged a midnight raid at Rose Mulwa’s family residence in Karen. During the sweep, detectives seized Over 40 mobile phones, a Mitsubishi Pajero vehicle, and multiple personal electronic devices and computers.
Cybercrime and forensic units are currently auditing these mobile phones to map out call data logs, geographical tracking trails, and financial transactions. Detectives believe these communication trails will link the mother and son directly to the contract hitmen, who are still at large.
Following these findings, Rose Mbithe Mulwa and her son Chris Mulwa were arrested on Thursday, July 30, 2026. The DCI homicide detectives apprehended them at their residence in Karen, Nairobi, during an intelligence-led operation just one day after the shooting of Dr. Victoria Mutiso. The duo was subsequently presented before the Milimani Law Courts the following morning, Friday, July 31, 2026.
In their formal application to hold the suspects for 30 days, investigators argued that keeping the mother and son in custody is necessary to prevent them from warning the shooters, remotely wiping, destroying, or altering call logs, text messages, and digital forensic data. The magistrate ordered them held through the weekend, with a definitive ruling on their 30-day detention set for Monday, August 3, 2026.
